Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant MartyrsFoxe, John
HistoryHistory
Fox's Book of Martyrs: Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant; Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs
Foxe, John
Church history; Martyrs; Persecution
Jacob Roseno was ordered to pray to the saints, which he absolutely
refused to do: some of the soldiers beat him violently with bludgeons to
make him comply, but he still refusing, several of them fired at him and
lodged a great many balls in his body. As he was almost expiring, they
cried to him, Will you call upon the saints? Will you pray to the
saints? To which he answered, No! No! No! when one of the soldiers, with
a broad sword, clove his head asunder, and put an end to his sufferings
in this world; for which undoubtedly, he is gloriously rewarded in the
next.
A soldier, attempting to ravish a young woman, named Susanna Gacquin,
she made a stout resistance, and in the struggle pushed him over a
precipice, when he was dashed to pieces by the fall. His comrades,
instead of admiring the virtue of the young woman, and applauding her
for so nobly defending her chastity, fell upon her with their swords,
and cut her to pieces.
Giovanni Pulhus, a poor peasant of La Torre, being apprehended as a
protestant by the soldiers, was ordered, by the marquis of Pianesta, to
be executed in a place near the convent. When he came to the gallows,
several monks attended, and did all they could to persuade him to
renounce his religion. But he told them he never would embrace idolatry,
and that he was happy at being thought worthy to suffer for the name of
Christ. They then put him in mind of what his wife and children, who
depended upon his labour, would suffer after his decease; to which he
replied, I would have my wife and children, as well as myself, to
consider their souls more than their bodies, and the next world before
this; and with respect to the distress I may leave them in, God is
merciful, and will provide for them while they are worthy of his
protection. Finding the inflexibility of this poor man, the monks
cried,--Turn him off, turn him off, which the executioner did almost
immediately, and the body being afterward cut down, was flung into the
river.
Paul Clement, an elder of the church of Rossana, being apprehended by
the monks of a neighbouring monastery, was carried to the market-place
of that town, where some protestants having just been executed by the
soldiers, he was shown the dead bodies, in order that the sight might
intimidate him. On beholding the shocking subjects, he said, calmly, You
may kill the body, but you cannot prejudice the soul of a true believer;
but with respect to the dreadful spectacles which you have here shown
me, you may rest assured, that God's vengeance will overtake the
murderers of those poor people, and punish them for the innocent blood
they have spilt. The monks were so exasperated at this reply, that they
ordered him to be hung up directly; and while he was hanging, the
soldiers amused themselves in standing at a distance, and shooting at
the body as at a mark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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